It’s an exciting time, you just got notice you’re license is affirmed and you’re going into business. It’s certainly time to celebrate, but more importantly, it’s time to plan your project, prepare your team, and implement ‘best practices’ in all you do from this point forward.

What does best practices really mean? How does it work and why is it important? Well, for starters, there are few, if any, retail industries that have more oversight and regulation than cannabis. To that end, best practices will prepare you and your operation to perform better in every aspect of your business operations. You will generate higher net-revenues than your competition, you will breeze through regulatory and compliance requirements, your staff will be top-tier extensions of your brand, and I could go on. Best practices is the logical endurance of doing things the right way the first time and every time. Let’s hit the basics at a high level.

We have all heard the saying “location, location, location,“ but in cannabis it goes even deeper. Unless you’re sitting on significant amounts of liquid cash to invest in soft-costs and construction, it’s always better to pay a bit more for clean retail space needing less construction investment, but likely at a higher monthly lease rate, than lower cost space that needs a lot of work. By spreading the value of the enhanced space over several years (OpEx model in the higher rent example) you preserve your cash position and likely spend less money overall when you finally open.